‘The Mandalorian’ actor Gina Carano and Disney settle lawsuit over alleged wrongful termination
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The Walt Disney Co. and Lucasfilm have settled a lawsuit brought by “The Mandalorian” actor Gina Carano, who alleged she had been wrongfully terminated from the show and discriminated against because of her social media posts.
Carano and Disney each separately confirmed the settlement Thursday, with Carano calling it the “best outcome for all parties involved.”
“I hope this brings some healing to the force,” she wrote in a post on X. “I am excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter. My desires remain in the arts, which is where I hope you will join me.”
She also thanked X owner and billionaire Elon Musk, who funded her lawsuit against Disney, calling it a “Good Samaritan deed” from someone she had never met.
A Lucasfilm spokesperson said in a statement Thursday that the company looked forward to “identifying opportunities to work together” with Carano in the “near future,” now that the lawsuit was concluded. The company did not disclose the conditions of the settlement.
Disney’s settlement with Gina Carano is not an indictment of ‘cancel culture’ or another example of corporate capitulation. It was simply the right thing to do.
“Ms. Carano was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff,” the spokesperson said. “She worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect.”
The settlement comes a little more than a year after Carano sued Burbank-based Disney, Lucasfilm and Huckleberry Industries after she was dismissed from the Disney+ series. Carano, who portrayed former Rebellion soldier Cara Dune for two seasons, had been criticized for several controversial social media posts.
In one now-deleted post, she implied that being conservative today was comparable with being Jewish during the Holocaust. Critics had also called out posts in which she falsely claimed voter fraud affected the results of the 2020 presidential election, derided pandemic-era mask mandates and made fun of stating people’s pronouns.
Her social media postings ignited a firestorm of controversy, with critics calling for her to be fired from the series, while her supporters urged others to cancel Disney+ instead.
In 2021, a Lucasfilm representative said in a statement that Carano was not currently employed by the “Star Wars” production company, and that there were “no plans for her to be in the future.” The statement also called her posts “abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Carano claimed at the time that she had been promised a role in the now-shelved “Star Wars” spinoff “Rangers of the New Republic.” In her lawsuit, she said she was “targeted, harassed, publicly humiliated, [and] defamed” for making “political statements that did not align with what [Disney] believed was an acceptable viewpoint.”
She had been seeking more than $75,000 in damages and to be reinstated in her role in “The Mandalorian.”
